


saw the stars in front of you (too tempting not to touch)

by extasiswings



Series: Storms & Saints [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Antonia Stark - Freeform, Bisexual Female Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Nightmares, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4672067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni wakes up after the Battle of New York to the roar of the Hulk and the first person she looks for is Steve. </p><p>(—he looks dirty and exhausted, but also more relieved than she's ever seen him, and the smile he gives her when he says, “We won,” makes her heart squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with the arc reactor and oh—)</p><p>Oh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saw the stars in front of you (too tempting not to touch)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).



> As always, thanks to shuofthewind for being a terrible (read: wonderful) enabler and cheerleader, because absolutely nothing in this series would have been written if it weren't for her. 
> 
> Happy Reading!

Toni wakes up after the Battle of New York to the roar of the Hulk and the first person she looks for is Steve.

_(—he looks dirty and exhausted, but also more relieved than she's ever seen him, and the smile he gives her when he says, “We won,” makes her heart squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with the arc reactor and oh—)_

_Oh._

Well, that complicates things.

The thing is, she’s with Pepper, and she loves Pepper, and yet somewhere between, “I want you on my team,” and, “Please tell me nobody kissed me,” she apparently fell in love with Steve Rogers as well.

_(—when she thinks about it, really thinks, she’s forced to admit that these feelings are nothing new, just shoved down and buried deep because she likes complicated math problems, not complicated feelings, and she has no idea what to do with these—)_

It’s ridiculous that Toni realizes it when she does—really, so ridiculous that she would laugh if she didn’t feel like being sick—because they’ve been at each other’s throats for the past week and the memory of the things she said to him makes her ashamed, even though she knows they were probably mostly the fault of Loki’s creepy staff and the stress of the mission.

_—“There are three people in this room and one of them is decidedly not of use. Care to guess which one?”—_

_—“Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”—_

_—“Maybe I should put on the suit. We can go a few rounds.”—_

_(—she could blame him for the things he said as well, but although they still sting even hours later, she can’t seem to actually be mad at him for them. After all, he didn’t say anything she hasn’t told herself a thousand times—)_

(Steve apologizes profusely for everything the day after the battle, even though as far as she’s concerned, it’s all water under the bridge. He doesn’t stop talking until she says she forgives him though, and the smile he gives her then is the same one from when she woke up and she has to go before she does something completely insane like kiss him)

She doesn’t tell Pepper.

It’s not that she’s trying to hide it per-say, but there are other things to talk about, like the fact that Toni almost died, and she doesn’t want it to be a Thing or for Pepper to think it’s more than it is because at the end of the day, Toni isn’t going to let anything happen with Steve because she may be many things, but she’s not a cheater.

_(—people assume she is because she’s bi and she used to sleep around, but she is not her father and she would never, never want to hurt someone like that, not ever, and certainly not Pepper who she doesn’t deserve in the first place—)_

What she does do is design private apartments for the whole team when she rebuilds the tower, but that is just practical and has absolutely nothing to do with the Steve beyond the fact that he’s technically the team leader.

_(—he gets a look on his face though, every time he gets up to go back to SHIELD housing, and sometimes he’ll say things when they talk late at night about how he doesn’t know where he fits in this world and he’s not sure he belongs anywhere and that’s ridiculous because doesn’t he know he belongs right next to her—)_

If she spends a month longer on Steve’s apartment than anyone else’s and pulls an all-nighter in her new workshop designing a punching bag that should withstand his strength, well, none of that means anything either.

_(When everything is finished, Toni has to twist his arm a little to convince him to come see it, and her stomach flips when they step off the elevator onto his floor because oh, god, this was the stupidest idea, but his eyes are soft and shining a little when he looks back to her after taking everything in—_

_—greens and browns and solid wood furniture, some old, some new, and it’s so different to anything else in the tower, so far from her usual aesthetic, but she wanted it to feel like home—_

_—and he squeezes her hand and she has to go, she has to go, because she can’t do this, so she runs away to California and doesn’t come back until after everyone else moves in too)_

Of course, it’s not as though Steve is the only thing on Toni’s mind. He is, in fact, one of the things she thinks about least, because she keeps herself busy whether she’s in Malibu or New York for the sole purpose of not thinking about him or anything else.

_(—she screams in her sleep and wakes up clawing at the arc reactor to remind herself that it’s still there, still working, and she’s home and not in space and Obie is dead, but so is Yinsen, and her mind is a constant stream of no, no, no, and so she works instead of sleeping for days on end, works until she collapses from exhaustion, and it’s not healthy but she prefers it to the nightmares—)_

This strategy only works as long as it takes Pepper to figure out that she’s decidedly not okay and after that, JARIVS has new protocols to lock her out of the workshop if she hasn’t slept in over 30 hours and Toni calls him a traitor but doesn’t actually try to change his programming to get around them.

_(—it does make things more difficult though, because Pepper is gone so often, but Steve isn’t, and he’s awake almost as often as Toni is, usually for the same reasons, and he sits with her when he finds her on the couches and doesn’t say a word when she tells him about Yinsen, just lets her curl into his side and runs his fingers through her hair as he tells her about Erskine and carries her to bed when she falls asleep on his shoulder—)_

(Somewhere along the line, Natasha decides to start setting up Steve with what sounds like any and all available SHIELD agents and when Toni comments on it in one of their sparring sessions, Natasha just smirks before taking her to the ground and that’s not fair because Toni is not jealous, dammit, she just thinks Natasha doesn’t know him at all)

In spite of everything though, ultimately, Toni is glad to have everyone in the tower, because her circle of people has always been small, but now she has a whole team, and it feels strange to call them her friends, but they are.

_(—in a way they’re also family, found and battle-forged, because no one else understands. She thinks ‘family’ and something inside of her curls up and purrs and she knows she would burn down the world for any of them, for every single one of them, but she’ll also settle for giving them a place to come in from the cold—)_

In the end, it isn’t Natasha that forces Toni’s hand, or Clint, or Steve himself, or even her own stupidity. It’s Bruce.

_It happens after a bad training session, one of the ones that invariably results in everyone slinking back to the tower exhausted, tense, and sore. Unsurprisingly, Toni and Steve spent most of it arguing over comms, leaving her with the kind of frustration that makes her want to either slap him or slam him up against the nearest wall and just—_

_“How much longer are you going to draw this out?” Bruce asks, startling her out of her reverie._

_Tony blinks. “Uh, what? Sorry, big guy, not really following.”_

_“You and Steve,” he clarifies, and her stomach twists unpleasantly._

_“Okay, now I’m really not following,” she hedges, but it isn’t true and the way Bruce looks at her over his glasses makes it obvious he knows that._

_“It’s not good for the team, the two of you fighting, especially not when both of you are picking fights for no reason because it’s easier than sitting down and having a real, honest conversation about your feelings. So I ask. How much longer are you going to draw this out? Because I’m on your side here, but eventually? Something has to give.”_

_He leaves and Toni stands rooted to the same spot for a good ten minutes trying to wrap her brain around that because just…what? Especially since it’s not as if Bruce doesn’t know she’s with Pepper, as if they all aren’t incredibly aware of that, but at the same time he’s right about her picking fights. She is, she has been, because it’s getting harder and harder to be around Steve but not with him, more difficult every day to stop herself from even considering what it might be like if he wanted her too._

_—not that he would because at the end of the day she’s still Toni Stark and the fact that Pepper loves her is already a miracle, and she knows she’s not lucky enough for another one, knows that he deserves so much better than her—_

Toni goes to Pepper after that and tells her everything, emphasizing over and over that she loves her, really, she loves her, and nothing’s happened, she swears, and when she’s finished, when she has no more words left, she closes her eyes and braces herself for the worst…and Pepper laughs.

_“Did you think I didn’t know?”_

_(—Toni’s head snaps up and what, what is she even saying, that makes no sense whatsoever because if she’s known, why would she stay, why would she still be here at all—)_

_“Toni…” Pepper’s voice gentles and she pulls Toni into a kiss that she goes along with mostly because she’s still really confused about what exactly is happening, but Pepper is kissing her and oh, that’s nice._

_“I’ve seen it from the beginning,” Pepper says when she pulls away. “You’re not exactly subtle, dear. So I knew what I was getting into when this started and I’ve had a long time to think about it.”_

_(—the thing is, Toni hears the words, but has a lot of difficulty processing them, because there’s absolutely no way Pepper means things the way they are coming across because that is not an outcome she ever even allowed herself to consider—)_

_“I, uh, I’m sorry,” Toni replies when she finally manages to make her voice work again. “I’m…really lost here. So I think, actually I know, that I’m going to need you to tell me exactly what you’re saying here, in like, the most explicit terms possible.”_

_Pepper smiles and shakes her head and it’s such a familiar look, such a fond look, that it makes Toni’s heart flip._

_“I’m saying that I think Steve is good for you and can give you certain things that I can’t, which is fine because there are things I think I can give you that he can’t. I’m saying that as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to choose.”_

_(—and that, that is the furthest thing from what Toni expected when she walked into the room, and she can’t find the words to even begin to respond, because god, she loves this woman, so she just pulls Pepper in for another kiss or twelve and there isn’t much talking for a while after that—)_

Of course, even after that it takes forever for Toni to actually do anything about the situation, at first because she’s still processing and then because she has absolutely no idea how to bring it up with Steve.

_(—she does a lot of research in preparation, partly to be prepared if she has to convince him it’s really okay, but as much for herself, because she’s known that she’s bi for over twenty years but never even considered she might also be poly, never really thought of it as an option because it’s always been hard enough convincing even one person to return her feelings—)_

In the end, it’s far easier than Toni expects it to be.

_She’s been awake for 32 hours when she finally falls asleep on one of the couches in the common area—_

_(—she dreams of drowning and falling and blood and Obie’s hand in her chest yanking—)_

_—and when she wakes up, Steve is there, a hair’s breadth away because he knows better than to wake someone in the middle of a nightmare, but there nonetheless. She’s shaking and her throat hurts from screaming and she’s not okay, but then she’s in his arms and it doesn’t fix anything but it grounds her in reality and she wonders if this is what Pepper meant by, “He can give you certain things that I can’t.”_

_(—she can see the bags under his eyes and the bruises on his knuckles and she knows he’s has a rough night as well because he wouldn’t look so terrible otherwise—)_

_Toni never talks about her nightmares outside of these times, but it’s easy to do with Steve because he understands. The whole team understands really, because none of their hands are clean, but Steve is the one who always seems to find her in the aftermath._

_(—he talks about Bucky, first the painful memories, the ones he dreams about, and then the good ones, and she nods off somewhere in the middle of a story about two eleven-year-old punks making trouble in a back alley in Brooklyn—)_

_This time, when he takes her back to her room, she wakes up long enough to curl her fingers tightly in the front of his shirt and whisper, “Stay. Stay with me,” and miraculously enough, he does._

_(—she sleeps and it’s glorious and when she wakes in the morning she’s still in his arms, because he hasn’t moved even though he’s awake and watching her, hope and caution warring in equal measure in his eyes—)_

_It takes Toni a while to get her words together, but eventually she manages to explain what she wants, and Steve accepts it so easily and without question that she wonders for a moment about Bucky and Peggy and whether there was more to that than she’s ever realized._

_(—she leaves that thought for another time though, because then she’s kissing him and he’s lacing their fingers together and his body is so solid over her, weight pressing her into the mattress, and they don’t do more than kiss, but it’s like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place and she can’t help but sigh and pull him closer—)_

It’s not perfect by any means, but then, relationships never are, and Toni has always been objectively terrible at them regardless. She tries her best though, and Pepper and Steve never hold it against her when she makes mistakes.

_(—and she does make mistakes, especially during the whole mess with AIM and the fake Mandarin, because she’s still learning to accept that she can’t just do things without any thought to her safety anymore, not when there are people who care about her that she has to consider—)_

For their six month anniversary, Toni designs Steve a new uniform—

_(—because if he has to go to D.C, she’s at least going to make sure he’s as safe as she can make him—)_

—and gives Pepper a new armor, designed specifically for her. She names it Rescue.

**Author's Note:**

> From the beginning I wanted to leave myself the option to go the OT3 route, although to be fair, it's less Pepper/Toni/Steve and more Pepper/Toni and Steve/Toni with Pepper/Steve as platonic bffs who bond over the fact that both of them are just trying to love this maddeningly impossible woman.


End file.
